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Several music publishers, including Warner/Chappell Music, filed a copyright suit Monday against Fullscreen, a "multichannel network," or MCN, that helps brands and individuals manage their YouTube presence. Their ultimate target: cover bands on YouTube. The plaintiffs are all affiliated with the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), which is in charge of collecting copyright royalties for songwriters and composers.

Anyone can jump onto YouTube and play some music from their favorite band. But now that companies like Fullscreen have become big business—based in part on the popularity of watching music videos online—they are a clear target for the NMPA.

In the NMPA's statement, the organization emphasizes the size and commercial nature of Fullscreen, noting that it has 15,000 YouTube channels with more than 200 million subscribers, producing more than 2.5 billion unique views per month. This lawsuit should be considered a "signal to the industry," the NMPA stated. A sampling of Fullscreen artists doing cover songs can be seen on the company's Fullscreen Artist Mix channel.

“Fullscreen’s success and growth as a digital business is attributable in large part to the prevalence and popularity of its unlicensed music videos," said NMPA President David Israelite. "We must stop the trend of ignoring the law, profiting from someone else’s work, then asking forgiveness when caught. It is not only unfair, it is unacceptable.”

YouTube already distributes royalties for much of its content to copyright holders, but it sometimes lets MCNs like Fullscreen handle such complications on their own.

Each music copyright has two parts, a copyright on the lyrics and composition and another on the recorded music. The NMPA is in charge of getting payments for songwriters and composers; the Recording Industry Association of America takes care of recording copyrights.

Artists wanting to create cover songs can distribute them via CDs or other units of recorded music by paying 9.1 cents per copy of a song. That "mechanical license" is set by law, and the cover band doesn't need permission from the original artist. However, to create a music video, a "synchronization license" is required from the music publishers.

The new lawsuit suggests that much of the royalty collection responsibility has moved away from YouTube and onto MCNs like Fullscreen. The NMPA already has an agreement with YouTube itself. The group sued YouTube in 2007 and reached a settlement in 2011 that allowed it to collect royalties on its songs.